If you're going to resort to patches to manage code as text, that's what source control systems like Git are good for. They also manage the emergent complexities with this approach:
- They help highlight one version of the code as the canonical one that most people are expected to be using. That way development effort isn't wasted on out-of-date code combinations that nobody cares about.
- They provide ways to merge textual changes, revert them, and otherwise apply them out of order.
What you have in mind might be a coherent alternative to the existing version control systems, so I'm not just saying to give up. :)
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"Is there a way to get a diff?"
Git makes it easy to create diffs (using the "git diff" command with various arguments), and GitHub makes it particularly easy to view certain kinds diffs on the Web. In GitHub, if you're on the stable branch and you click the "commits" button you get to this page:
Don't bother trying to copy and paste a diff from GitHub though. I think you'd have better luck at a command line, even if it means learning several commands. (I'm not sure I know all the right commands myself though. >.> )
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"If it's Arc 3.1 why is it named Anarki?"
There are a lot of ways to answer that question. If someone wants to make a contribution to Arc so that every other Arc user can benefit, that's what Anarki is for. However, not everyone uses Anarki, so the fantasy is that it's Arc, but the reality is that it's a specific project that we refer to by a specific name.
I'm not actually sure why that branch of Anarki exists, but it looks like it was created to support plain Arc 3.1 coding without all the extensions people made to the master branch. Its differences mostly have to do with adding text editor extensions and shell commands to support Arc 3.1 programs.
"Don't bother trying to copy and paste a diff from GitHub though. I think you'd have better luck at a command line, even if it means learning several commands. (I'm not sure I know all the right commands myself though. >.> )"
True. I coulda sworn github had a raw view. Was that just for snapshots?
